Upcoming Wolverine film leaks to BitTorrent (Updated)

[Updated] A premature version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked to BitTorrent …

Editor's Note: The original version of this story, which you can find here, erroneously linked the Wolverine movie leak with an FBI datacenter raid in Dallas. Ars Technica regrets the error.

On April Fools Day this week, BitTorrent users were having fun at the expense of anything but a joke: copies of an unfinished version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked to the Internet.

Wolverine first leaked to BitTorrent on April Fools, allegedly in DVD quality. This version is said to be incomplete, however, with a number of missing scenes, unfinished special effects, and scores from other films spliced in for portions of the soundtrack. Nevertheless, the leaked Wolverine was promptly downloaded over 75,000 times within the first few hours of its premature Internet debut.

20th Century Fox issued a statement later that day about the leak, acknowledging that an "early version" of Wolverine has been "posted illegally on websites." The studio also fired a warning shot across the bow of whoever leaked it, stating that "we forensically mark our content so we can identify sources that make it available or download it." Fox also mentions that the MPAA and FBI are investigating the crime, and that it will "prosecute the source and any subsequent postings to the fullest extent of the law."

Naturally, 20th Century Fox is none too happy about the leak, which contains watermarks from Rising Sun Pictures (RSP), an Australian special effects studio working on parts of the film. However, Chairman and co-founder Tony Clark released a statement on RSP's website that his company had nothing to do with leaking Wolverine. "As we worked on individual sequences within the film, neither RSP or its staff members have ever been in possession of a full-length version, so it would have been impossible for the movie to have been leaked from here."

More than likely, 20th Century Fox is most worried about a film leaking out before much of its fit and polish (and even some of its core components) were added. But as we have seen in recent years, movie piracy has not seemed to cause the industry much harm. The MPAA touted record box office sales of $9.63 billion and $9.78 billion in 2007 and 2008, respectively, suggesting that this leak may not have much of an effect on X-Men Origins: Wolverine this summer.